BACBI: Israel.

Nir HASSON: "The Untold Story of the Jews Who Left Mandatory Palestiney" (Haaretz, Feb 16, 2018): click here!

In the three decades before Israel’s establishment, some 60,000 Jews left the country for financial or ideological reasons. A new book reveals a dark corner of Zionist history, including the forced expulsion of ‘burdensome’ Jewish immigrants.

Donald Trump’s recognition this week of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, overturning seven decades of US policy in the region and effectively ending hopes of a two-state solution, has provoked dire warnings.

The first annual conference of the ultra-Orthodox faction of the Labor Party took place on Nov. 26. While people mostly associate the ultra-Orthodox with the Israeli right, it might come as a surprise that the Labor Party has an ultra-Orthodox faction.

By relying on faith-based arguments devoid of any diplomatic or legal validity, Israeli politicians are undermining the solid foundations of the Zionist narrative, which have been accepted by the international community for a century.

New Labor Party chair Avi Gabbay made a few surprising statements this week that made it abundantly clear he was abandoning the party’s traditional ideological stand as leader of the center-left, hoping to lure voters on the political right and gain sufficient support to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Government ministries have not managed to this day to update or replace dozens of emergency orders, a large number of them economic and consumer regulations, whose existence are dependent on Israel being in an ongoing state of emergency.

Once Israeli commentators had said everything they could possibly say about alleged connections between the perpetrator of the Las Vegas massacre and Islamic terrorism, the media shifted its attention to Americans' "intolerably easy access to guns," mixing a measure of scorn with pity.

Palestinians and Israelis watched last week’s referendum of Iraq’s Kurds with special interest. Israeli officials and many ordinary Palestinians were delighted – for very different reasons – to see an overwhelming vote to split away from Iraq.

Yakub Abu al-Kiyan was killed by police during a protest against the demolition of Bedouin houses to make way for Jewish ones; his widow and 10 kids are living in a tent next to the rubble of their home.

Hundreds if not thousands of Bedouin are having their citizenship revoked seemingly for no reason, according to ‘Haaretz.’ Shocking as it may be, it’s not surprising. Citizenship has never provided non-Jewish Israelis with the same security it gives their Jewish compatriots.

The operational research unit of the Military Intelligence Unit — the software unit of the Israeli army’s J6/C4i Directorate’s Lotem Unit — doesn’t look like the kind of place where state-of-the art artificial intelligence is being put to work.

There’s a big noise in Israel these days – once again, the discussion of the death penalty for Palestinian ‘terrorists’ has come to the fore. One has to put that word, ‘terrorists’, in quotation marks, because the Israeli Peace Index survey published yesterday, asked the question not only concerning applying the death penalty for Palestinians killing civilians, but also, specifically, concerning Palestinian killings of Israeli soldiers.

Mass demonstrations in Jaffa following Israel Police’s killing of an unarmed Arab man resemble Black Lives Matter resistance to police brutality and discrimination throughout the U.S.

Charlie ZIMMERMAN: "Jewish resistance to occupation is also fighting for the future of Judaism itself” (Mondoweiss, July 31): click here!

In May of 2017, I traveled to the West Bank as a member of a delegation organized by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV). We were 130 Diaspora Jews, mostly Americans, working in partnership with Palestinian and Israeli resistance organizations to peacefully oppose the occupation of the East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Yossi GURVITZ: "Sorry American Jews, you don’t have a birthright” (Mondoweiss, July 25, 2017): click here!

A colloquial expression in Hebrew is “tzeh li me’havrid” – “get out of my veins”: you are too pushy, too close, you’re brutally invading my space. It’s an aggressive expression, and aggression is not my intention, so I’ll go with “American Jews, kindly get out of my veins.” As a left-wing Israeli, the last thing I want is your intervention in my politics – or, rather, your intervention as Jews.

Last month, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon made a disgusting and dangerous speech to the media outside the Security Council. In it, he continued a long-running campaign of incitement and hatred against human rights organisations...

It began in 1967 with the expulsion of hundreds of Arab Jerusalemites from the area of the Western Wall, and continues with a series of Jewish triumphalist projects seeking to blot out the presence of Arabs.

The more nationalistic Israel becomes, the more its affection will grow for those who promote nationalism and xenophobia, even if they are anti-Semites, as seen in Netanyahu's dealings with Hungary's government.

New Study Reveals How Secular Israelis Have Eroded the Religious Status Quo. Seventy years ago, David Ben-Gurion laid the foundation for the relationship between religion and state in Israel - or in other words, the status quo. What's left of it?

Mikhael MANNEKIN: "Lost in Translation: The Israeli-U.S. Jewish Anti-occupation Alliance Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?" (Haaretz, July 6, 2017): click here.

While right-wing ties deepen, relations between progressives - against the occupation, for liberal democracy and pluralism in Israel - are fraying. We need a new way to make political change, together.

They're not saying 'Oh, please, come to Israel so we can all live together as soul-mates.' They're saying, 'We hate you. We don't want your kind here.' They want you to walk away, to abandon the playing field to them.

Majority of funding in 2015 to Im Tirtzu, a frequent and outspoken critic of Israeli human rights organizations, came from two U.S. groups close to Netanyahu and the GOP.

David SHULMAN, « Israel’s Irrational Rationality » (The New York Review of Books, June 22, 2017 issue): click here!

This June, Israel is marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day War. Some Israelis, including most members of the present government, are celebrating the country’s swift victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria as the beginning of the permanent annexation of the entire Palestinian West Bank; others, like me, mourn it as the start of a seemingly inexorable process of moral corruption and decline,...

An Israeli human rights lawyer who for over seven years wrote to the United Nations requesting help for children and families damaged by Israeli judicial corruption is now himself a victim of illegal arrest and detention.

The purpose of exposing children at an impressionable age to so much gore and killing is not hard to divine. It creates traumatised children, distrustful and fearful of anyone outside their tribe. That way they become more pliant soldiers, trigger-happy as they rule over Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The humanist reviver of modern Hebrew, who explicitly sought help from "her sister, Arabic", would not recognize the idea the two languages are each other's nemesis, as Israel’s nation-state bill seems to imagine.

Yagil LEVY: "What if Israel Had Withdrawn From the Occupied Territories in 1967?" (Haaretz, May 13, 2017): click here!

Israel’s most serious problems are often attributed to its protracted rule in the occupied territories. But would it really be better off without them?

THE PRESENT Israeli government coalition consists of 67 (out of 120) members of the Knesset. Each member wants to be elected again (and again and again. In order to be reelected, he or she must attract the attention of the public.

New legislation to cement the definition of Israel as a state belonging exclusively to Jews around the world is a “declaration of war” on Palestinian citizens of Israel, the minority’s leaders warned this week.

The nation-state bill means, for the first time in its history, Israel's unwritten constitution will explicitly exclude Palestinian citizens from the right to equality and collective rights.

Jonathan OFIR: "The ‘nation state of the Jewish people’ bill is just more Apartheid with a veil" (Mondoweiss, May 11, 2017): click here!

Yesterday, the bill titled “Nation State of the Jewish People” (NSJP) was passed by the Israeli Knesset in a preliminary vote (48-41). This is a major hurdle, and while it’s not done yet, it’s getting close.

The new nation-state bill seeks to cancel Arabic’s status as Israel’s second 'official language,' one of the most ludicrous lies heard here in decades. When was Arabic actually an official language in Israel?

New nation-state bill holds that the State of Israel is 'the national home of the Jewish people,' and that 'the right to realize self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.'

An entire army of politicians and judges, PR flacks and diplomats, prison guards and Shin Bet security service agents, police officers and soldiers, bureaucrats and clerks is invested in the occupation. And still, Netanyahu is afraid.

Dear brothers and sisters, survivors of the Holocaust. The first evening of Hanukkah 5704, 1943, in the prisoner’s hut in Bergen-Belsen, the Bluzhover Rebbe, Rabbi Israel Spira, recited the blessing over the lighting of the Hanukkah candles.

More than a decade ago, the Israeli government launched a new strategy that it dubbed “Brand Israel”. This began in 2006 as an effort to improve Israel’s negative image overseas, “by downplaying religion and avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians.”

Israel’s late 1947 -1948 “War of Independence” took six months to create a new Jewish state, excluding Arabs to the greatest extent possible. To accomplish it, widespread war crimes and atrocities were committed as about 800,000 people were brutally uprooted, ethnically cleansed, or murdered in cold blood. In addition, 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other cities were destroyed and erased except in the collective memories of their inhabitants and descendants who’ll always consider them their rightful homes.

Jonathan OFIR: "Israel’s ‘right to exist’ and the Palestinian right to resist" (Mondoweiss, April 9, 2017): click here!

Israel’s demand that Palestinians recognize it as a ‘Jewish State’ is a demand for legitimizing Apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and Palestinians certainly have a right to resist it. So does everyone else.

“Phew! If you receive this…” it means the Conference is actually happening — so began the letter that welcomed us at the three-day International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Exceptionalism and Responsibility conference in Cork, Ireland, so tenuous and troubled was its genesis.

It takes tremendous courage to recognize that the political views that you have held for your entire adult life have been at least partly mistaken. Larry Derfner, a prominent American-turned-Israeli journalist now in his mid-60s, has such courage.

Several hundred people, possibly 1,000, predominantly Jewish Israelis, took part in a demonstration in Jerusalem on Saturday night (April 1), carrying and chanting anti-occupation and pro-peace banners and slogans.

To obtain funding, filmmakers working with the Rabinovich Foundation must declare their films won't present Independence Day as a day of mourning or insult symbols of the state.

Amira HASS: "Are Israelis More or Less Violent Than Their Potential?" Haaretz, March 29, 2017): click here!

Why should someone who for three years of their lives, at least, the most natural gesture was to load a rifle and aim it at a civilian population, not conclude that attacking women is their birthright?

By threatening the livelihood of Palestinian theater workers, Regev is committing cultural terrorism: she is putting people’s livelihoods at risk — people whose only sin is holding different political principles.

Larry DERFNER, “Israel’s Next War Is Always ‘Inevitable’” (The New York Times, March 28, 2017): click here!

MODIIN, Israel — In this country, people have learned to accept that one war follows another, every two or three years. “An Inevitable Conflict in Gaza,” ran a headline in the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot earlier this month. “With Lebanon no longer hiding Hezbollah’s role, next war must hit civilians where it hurts, Israeli minister says,” Haaretz reported a few days later.

A new poll was released by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on Tuesday, revealing that the majority of Israelis oppose any Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, while 79 percent of Israelis believe its important to maintain a unified Jerusalem under Israeli control, in contradiction to longstanding international peace negotiations and international law.

Over 14,000 Arabs have had their residency rights revoked since 1967 because they were absent from Jerusalem for more than 7 years. Court ruling challenges practice that treated them like immigrants in their own city.

"Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, Executive Summary" (UNESCWA, March 2017): click here!

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law".

"Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid" (UNESCWA, March 2017): click here!

The authors of this report, examining whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, fully appreciate the sensitivity of the question. Even broaching the issue has been denounced by spokespersons of the Israeli Government and many of its supporters as anti-Semitism in a new guise.

Thousands of words have been written and spoken about the report issued Feb. 28 by the state comptroller on the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. Bereaved parents wept as they read the document describing how the country’s leadership sent their children to their deaths with barely a thought.

Stanley L.COHEN: "Jim Crow is alive and well in Israel" (Al-Jazeera, March 1, 2017): click here!

Long before Israel erected separate communities, the United States perfected the art of the artificial divide.

The PLO department of Culture & information has issued the monthly incitement report for the month of February 2017, which showcases examples of inflammatory comments and incitement by Israeli officials and leaders.

Israel’s main government watchdog has criticised the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a damning report on the 2014 Gaza war, saying the country was badly prepared for the threat of Hamas tunnels, and that many senior cabinet members were kept in the dark about vital information.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog deserves praise for the 10-point plan he published in Haaretz on Thursday. His 10 points reveal a vision and create a horizon of great hope. I would like to add just one tiny additional point to them, one that would turn his plan into the peak of perfection: the 11th point.

An 18-month jail sentence handed down to an Israel Defence Force (IDF) recruit for the killing of a wounded Palestinian has prompted for widespread criticism for its apparent leniency in light of the severity of his crime.

Two recent cases of Israeli troops caught murdering Palestinians demonstrate the power, and limitations, of an entire nation deciding to believe what it wants to believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Israel's parliament voted on a bill that expropriates private Palestinian land in the West Bank. What does the new law change, who is affected and why is it such a big deal?

Jonathan COOK: "Land law is final nail in the two-state solution coffin” (The Nation, Feb 7, 2017): click here!

The Israeli parliament passed the legalisation law on Monday night – a piece of legislation every bit as suspect as its title suggests. The law widens the powers of Israeli officials to seize the last fragments of Palestinian land in the West Bank that were supposed to be off-limits. Now, almost nowhere will be out of the settlers’ reach.

Hassoun Makhlouf spent years washing cars to save enough money to build his own house. But in just minutes, on 10 January, Israeli bulldozers razed that dream to the ground. Makhlouf, 56, had spent most of his life in rental accommodation.

An interesting debate has been taking place in Haaretz on “what has gone wrong with secularism” and “why is Israel becoming more religious?” The trigger is largely Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s transformation of the national education system into a clone of the religious-Zionist system, replacing civics with Jewish indoctrination and introducing ever more religious Jewish content.

Israel’s global standing is continuing to deteriorate, a new report from some of the country’s top strategists concludes. “Israel’s image in Western countries continues to decline, a trend that enhances the ability of hostile groups to engage in actions aimed at depriving Israel of moral and political legitimacy and launch boycotts,” the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University states in its 2016-2017 Strategic Survey for Israel.

Hatim KANAANEH: "The challenges of being a Palestinian doctor in the ‘Jewish state’” (Mondoweiss, Jan 3, 2017): click here!

Makbula Nassar, our proud journalist, community activist and prime instigator of Arrabeh’s claim to medical leadership, in numbers of doctors if not in institutions, is quoted giving me credit as the first Western trained MD in my village for inspiring its flood of local physicians.

Sami PERETZ: "Punishing the World for UN Vote Will Be Worse for Israel Than BDS” (Haaretz, Dec 27, 2016): click here!

After the settlements censure, Israel's consul general in New York suggested linking Israeli know-how to diplomatic support. But that would be like cutting off our nose to spite our export markets.

“This is a difficult night for Israel,” said opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) in wake of the recent UN Security Council resolution condemning all Israeli settlements, which he opined the United States should have vetoed. Herzog said the resolution “seriously harms our capital Jerusalem, the settlement blocs and Israel’s status and diplomatic achievements accumulated over the years.”

Recent data indicate that Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett is using his budget to inject more orthodox and national values into schools, reducing the budget for teaching democratic and pluralistic values.

Israel’s military rule over its Palestinian citizens may have ended in 1966, but the long arm of the Shin Bet and the police continues to meddle in our private affairs. I know from personal experience.

The 1956 massacre of 48 innocent villagers by Border Policemen remains a festering wound in Israeli Arab society. Its current residents are launching an audio-visual spectacle to convey the message: Take responsibility for what happened here.

The present government may be deepening the alienation between Jewish and Arab citizens, and Jewish-Arab coexistence may be in deep crisis, but let’s not make light of steps that have been taken to correct the injustice.

The distrust with which Palestinians treat the Israeli peace camp frequently appears as something of a surprise, and even affront, to international observers. But the difference between Israeli left and right is all too frequently one of degree, rather than kind.

The obituaries for Shimon Peres have already appeared, no doubt prepared in advance as the news of his hospitalization reached the media. The verdict on his life is very clear and was already pronounced by US President Barack Obama: Peres was a man who changed the course of human history in his relentless search for peace in the Middle East.

Shimon Peres, who passed away Wednesday aged 93 after suffering a stroke on 13 September, epitomised the disparity between Israel’s image in the West and the reality of its bloody, colonial policies in Palestine and the wider region.

The Israeli military censor has redacted, in full or in part, over 17,000 articles since 2011. While fewer articles have been censored in 2015 and 2016, the new IDF Censor is attempting to redact already-published information with alarming frequency.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are its Achilles’ heel; they refuse to become Zionists, refuse to leave Israel, and refuse to vanish into thin air. And, increasingly, they are refusing to remain silent.

Zeev STERNHELL: "Israel's Left Barely Exists, While Its Political Center Is Filled With Cowards and Sycophants” (Haaretz, Sept 19, 2016): click here!

If Israel had a real left, it would say that Zionism was needed to rescue European Jewry, not a campaign to liberate sacred stones.

There won’t be a critical mass for change as long as the dirty, contemptible work of maintaining the occupation isn’t divided equally among all classes of society.

Yakov HIRSCH: "It’s war between Netanyahu and the generals (and the PM may just have lost the corporal)” (Mondoweiss, Sept 8, 2016): click here!

The trial in Israel of Sergeant Elor Azaria for the killing of a Palestinian lying incapacitated on the street in Hebron last March may not be news in the United States, but it is causing huge divisions inside Israel, with one former security official warning of an impending civil war in Israel between Jewish factions.

These are difficult days for the Israeli left and its leaders, much more so than it seems. It appears that the left-wing camp, which was previously also known as the peace camp, has become illegitimate and post-Zionist. This is of course a misrepresentation, because the Israeli left, including Meretz, which is far left, includes citizens who are no less Zionist than Culture Minister Miri Regev of Likud.

Israel lobby groups recently reacted with outrage against the Movement for Black Lives policy platform which refers to US complicity in Israel’s “genocide” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people.The president of the liberal Zionist organization J Street condemned the use of the term genocide as “outrageously incorrect and deeply offensive.”

Shattering the universal dimension in education is a pretty good recipe for increasing the gaps between the different groups that make up Israeli society.

Kamel HAWWASH: "If Israel wants to be treated like a normal state, it should act like one" (MEMo, Aug 29, 2016): click here!

Israel claims to be a Western-style “democratic” state but only certain inhabitants of the land it has controlled since 1967 - basically all of historic Palestine - have a right to vote in its elections.

A thousand reports are published about every West Bank settler who is murdered, yet Friday's killing of an innocent man evoked one big yawn. It's not terror, or apartheid, or racism or dehumanization. It's only killing a subhuman.

Anyone ever expecting Israel to end the occupation, either voluntarily or via international pressure, needs to think again. We are on course to become a binational state, and Jews should plan accordingly.

A May 15 letter sent by the Israeli Education Ministry’s pedagogic administration to school principals throughout the country announced that “50 Years of a Unified Jerusalem” will be the theme of the upcoming school year, which starts Sept. 1. The heads of the educational institutions were informed that they will have at their disposal a “program to deepen the students’ affinity and connection to Jerusalem.”

Israel’s biggest military companies last year rang alarm bells over a decline in international contracts, citing smaller budgets, more competition, and less desire for Israeli-made products as among the reasons. Is this an indicator that Israel’s arms industry might not be as invincible as it seems?

“You deserve to see your loved ones suffer and die. But, maybe, you would be hurt before them,” was part of a threatening message received by a staff member at Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights group. The photo attached to the email was of the exterior of the activist’s home. The gist of the message: ‘we are coming for you.’

After a total of 155 days inside a cell and over the span of six separate stays in an Israeli military prison, 19-year-old Tair Kaminer was released in July as the longest serving female conscientious objector to the Israeli military service.

In testimony at his manslaughter trial for summarily executing a disarmed Palestinian attacker, Elor Azaria is openly describing the violence, de-humanization, hatred, and settler domination that defines the occupation. But make no mistake, he’s not breaking his silence.

Strategic Affairs Ministry aims to change the way Israel is perceived in the international arena, director general Sima Vaknin tells lawmakers; says victory will be achieved when Israel won't be equated with apartheid.

The media is therefore the big collaborator in the occupation, allowing it to exist without raising questions. It is the senior partner in the demonization of the Palestinians, and it aids in the concealment and denial of the crimes of the occupation.

Was it meant as an epic parody or an insult to his audience’s intelligence? It was hard to tell. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took to social media to apologise for last year’s notorious election-day comment, when he warned that “the Arabs are coming out to vote in droves” – a reference to the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian.

Israel may not be Nazi, nor even a fascist state. Yet it is a member of the same terrible family, the family of evil states. Just consider these acts of evil perpetrated by the state...

Almog BEN ZIKRI: "Protesters, Police Clash at Israeli Arab Village Set to Be Razed for Jewish Town" (Haaretz, July 31, 2016): click here!

Three cops and one civilian wounded and several arrests made as violence erupts at Umm al-Hiran, where bulldozers and earth removal equipment began digging near the homes of the unrecognized Bedouin village.

Yotam BERGER: "Secret 1970 Document Confirms First West Bank Settlements Built on a Lie" (Haaretz, July 28, 2016): click here!

In minutes of meeting in then-defense minister Moshe Dayan’s office, top Israeli officials discussed how to violate international law in building settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Yesh Atid Knesset member Aliza Lavie claims that the new laws excluding many Israelis from ritual baths and undoing the core curriculum requirements for ultra-Orthodox children are ominous signs of the ultra-Orthodox stranglehold on the government.

Freedom of speech is the new war in Israel. Lory Shem Tov, a prolific journalist and blogger, has written tirelessly about the human rights abuses of corrupt judges in the corrupt judicial system of Israel.

But the executions – there’s no other way to describe them – of girls and boys, women and men, keep coming.

Or KASHTI: "For Jews and Arabs, Israel’s School System Remains Separate and Unequal" (Haaretz, July 7, 2016: click here!

Naftali Bennett likes to tweet that he’s “the education minister of all Israeli children.” But the decision to give Arab teachers’ colleges in the north only about half the funding per student compared to other teachers’ colleges casts doubt on that statement.

A modified version of a controversial NGO "transparency" bill received approval in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday, paving the way for the bill to enter its second and third readings which could potentially see the contentious legislation incorporated into Israeli law, according to various Israeli media outlets.

The Israeli parliament on Wednesday passed a law expanding the power of the state to label individuals or groups as “terrorists,” in what critics said will be exploited to criminalize legitimate Palestinian political activity.

Israeli cultural institutions received a form from the government on Monday asking them to state whether they had or hadn’t offered performances last year in the Negev, the Galilee or West Bank settlements.

"Only Solution to Palestinian Terrorism Is the End of the Occupation" (Haaretz Editorial, June 10, 2016: click here!

In the wake of the deadly Tel Aviv attack, ministers voice empty bravado and call for collective punishment, thereby just pushing more Palestinians to violence. It's time Israel learned the lesson: Terrorism will continue as long as the occupation does.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai and Joint List lawmakers found the culprit for the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv that took four lives – not just the two terrorists from Yatta, but the “occupation” and the government they said Thursday.

Mohammed Zeidan, from the Arab community of Kafr Manda in northern Israel, is the only Arab in Israel who has been able to get the ultranationalist Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi from the Joint List to exchange warm greetings. Zeidan, 19, scored an 800 on Israeli's Psychometric Entrance Test, the highest possible score. Tibi praised his achievement on Twitter, and Bennett was quick to retweet Tibi’s greeting, leading the two political foes to exchange kind words.

With the assent of Israel’s hard-right new defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, the man he replaced warned of the direction Israeli political life is now taking. “Extremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement,” Moshe Yaalon said gravely.

The Israeli military justice system acts only to ‘cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators,’ B’Tselem says, citing 25 years of experience working with the military. Palestinian rights expert welcomes the move.

B'Tselem: "The Occupation's Fig Leaf: Israel's Military Law Enforcement System as a Whitewash Mechanism" (B'Tselem, May, 2016: click here!

The military law enforcement system is supposed to handle complaints filed against soldiers for harm caused to Palestinians in the West Bank, including cases of violence and gunfire that resulted in injury or death. Such harm is endemic to the occupation, which has been in place for nearly fifty years.

"A Death Penalty Only for Palestinians" (Haaretz Editorial, May 22, 2016: click here!

There are so many reasons to oppose capital punishment. But Avigdor Lieberman's attempt to adopt it is particularly odious.

Despite the Israeli government’s attempt to legislate into silence any Palestinian national mourning through the 2011 Nakba Law, in most ways it’s hard to think of one narrative without the other. Israel’s founding constituted a moment of elation for Zionists just as it violently dislocated the Palestinians.

These nice and principled military figures are beloved on the center-left, which has always dreamed about ethical generals who make eloquent Holocaust Remembrance Day speeches, but they are nothing more than empty salves to the conscience of the purportedly enlightened tribe.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his colleagues from other Orthodox parties know that teaching their ideology to school children will benefit themselves politically in the long run.

Nada ELIA: "The end of apartheid in Israel will not destroy the country, it can only improve it" (Mondoweiss, April 21, 2016: click here!

...what kind of person would view the abolition of institutionalized racism as a loss, a disappearance, rather than a global victory? What kind of person actually believes South Africa was finished, after the end of white supremacy there?

The Knesset ratified the first reading of Israel's suspension bill, which allows the suspension of Knesset members and targets Arab lawmakers on charges of committing treason or supporting any terror or hostility toward Israel. Lawmakers voted 59-53 in favor of the bill March 28.

The ruling Likud party welcomed to Israel members of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, whose founders were high-ranking officials in the Third Reich. But the Israeli Right’s ties to fascist movements stretches back as far as the 1920s.

“Israel should have exploited China’s suppression of the demonstrations [Tienanmen Square], at a time when the world’s attention was devoted to events in that country, in order to conduct mass expulsions of the Arabs [sic] of the Occupied Territories."

Whilst the State of Israel marks itself as the Jewish State, many Zionists and particularly liberal Zionists, often make a strong separation between Judaism and Zionism, noting that Zionism is essentially a secular ideology, and that its manifestation, Israel, is essentially a secular state.

My uncle, who we buried this week, fought alongside other children of refugees who believed this was a war for the liberation of their nation. What does today’s 'war' of occupation have to do with that?

Peter BEINART: "Why Rabbi Sacks Is Wrong: Palestinians Don’t Have to Be anti-Semites to Be anti-Zionists" (Haaretz, April 6, 2016: click here!

The former British chief rabbi is a wise and brilliant man, but his recent essay does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews: it dehumanizes them.

It might have been a moment that jolted Israelis to their senses. Instead the video of an Israeli soldier shooting dead a young Palestinian man as he lay wounded and barely able to move has only intensified the tribal war dance of the Israeli public

Philip WEISS: "‘Zionism is nationalism, not Judaism,’ a former Hebrew school teacher explains" (Mondoweiss, April 4, 2016: click here!

The media have at last taken up an important discussion: the relationship of Judaism and Zionism. Many supporters of Israel say that to be Jewish means to be a Zionist; and therefore it’s anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist.

The “Jewish State”, by its very definition, has to keep its population separated in definition, so that it would always reserve for itself the possibility of discriminating against a “sector” of the population on a quasi-religious-quasi-racial basis, without it appearing as if it favours one “Israeli” more than another “Israeli” – simply because for the State of Israel, ISRAELIS DON’T EXIST.

Akiva ELDAR: "Israel's war between the Jews" (Al-Monitor, March 15, 2016: click here!

While the international community keeps trying to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, many Orthodox Israelis reject not only Arabs but all also other Jews.

Tristan DUNNING: "Israel: Just another crackpot regime in the Middle East" (The New Arab, March 10, 2016: click here!

Israel claims to be the only democracy in the region, but its institutional racism demonstrates the state's tangential grasp on reality.

For decades, intellectuals tried and failed to explain the root of the conflict as a settler-colonial project. Now at last that paradigm has come into fashion in academia; and it is acute and powerful, and helps explain the relevance of Palestine to the Middle East and the world at large.

Ruth EGLASH & William BOOTH: "Israel to launch one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, with U.S. help" (The Washington Post, March 3, 2016: click here!

TEL AVIV — A joint exercise now being conducted between thousands of Israeli troops and the U.S. European Command represents a final test before Israel begins to deploy one of the most sophisticated missile defense systems in the world.

Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz: "The right to own property — for Jews alone" (+972, March 4, 2016): click here!

The government never authorized the wholesale annexation of the West Bank. That’s why it’s doing it behind everyone’s backs.

There is only one logical and civilized way to determine the owners of the land of Palestine and that is in the United Nations and its charters as agreed upon by 194 nations. Boycotts, divestments and sanctions may be the only route to compel Israel to understand that fact.

Israel has long fought against its most vocal critics. But what we see unfolding now both in terms of repressive laws and also of strategic attacks coming from the far right is unprecedented in recent history, and thus warrants our close attention.

Gideon LEVY: "Israeli racism is evolving, but it's okay, because the joke is being told about Arabs" (Haaretz, Feb 25, 2016): click here!

Here’s a joke. David Levy, a former Israeli minister who hailed from Morocco, is walking down the street with his wife and son. The kid falls into a pit. Levy asks his wife: “Should we get him out, or make another one?”

On January 3, two Palestinians were removed from an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv, after Jewish Israelis claimed that they constituted a "security risk".

Jonathan COOK: "Israel is on the brink of a tyranny of the majority" (The National, Feb 23, 2016): click here!

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Tel Aviv is drafting legislation that ought to resolve in observers’ minds the question of whether Israel is the democracy it proudly claims to be. The bill empowers a three-quarters majority of the Israeli parliament to oust a sitting MP.

The brutal video footage in which Border Policemen empty a magazine into a Palestinian last week proves that the IDF now needs to take 'defense' out of its name.

Samah SALAIME: "What about us ‘beasts’ living inside the Villa in the Jungle?" (+972, Feb 21, 2016): click here!

Netanyahu’s magic solution for all of Israel’s problems is to fence the state in. But he will still be left with over a million Arabs, potential beasts of prey, and all the incitement in the world will not remove them.

Citizenship here is reminiscent of South Africa's in the past: Jews are 'white' citizens, Arabs in Israel have 'colored' (in other words, partial) citizenship; and Palestinians in the territories have 'black' citizenship, without political rights.

The contentious bill, sponsored by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi), demands that NGOs which receive funding from foreign governments specify that in all their official publications, along with the names of the countries that contribute.

It does not seem likely that a just solution to the Palestinian plight will come from within Israel... Indeed, at this historical juncture, international pressure is perhaps the only hope and is desperately needed.

An open letter to my fellow Israelis:
This is probably a culmination of nearly a decade’s reviewed study of our history. At some point, beyond the singular stories, cases and arguments, I feel something unequivocal and very generally encompassing needs to be said about our Israeli “miracle”, the manifestation of the Zionist “dream”.

Michel WARSCHAWSKI: "The State of Israel is changing its nature" (alternativenews.org, Feb 8, 2016): click here!

It sounds like fascism, it smells like fascism, it looks like fascism.

Long before the state of Israel was founded, Israeli Military Industries (IMI) was established in 1933 to provide arms for the Jewish militias in Palestine. The company grew to become Israel’s fifth largest arms company and 45th largest industrial company in Israel. IMI employs about 3,600 workers, and produces ammunition, electronic systems and mobile military bridges. It also attempts to enter the “homeland security” market, and has confidential lines of production.

Ben LYNFIELD: "Blacklist of artists and intellectuals published by Israeli right-wing group prompts warnings of 'McCarthyism'" (The Independent, Jan 29, 2016): click here!

Novelist Anat Einhar, recipient of the prime minister's award for literature last year and a figure on Im Tirtzu's blacklist for participating in the Breaking the Silence event, told the Independent that Im Tirtzu is targeting independent thought... She thinks that Mr Netanyahu "is enjoying this. Im Tirtzu are the hunting dogs of Netanyahu's rule. He cannot express himself as they do, he has to be more statesmanlike. But they serve him and there is a complete fit between the messages of fear that Netanyahu projects in order to stay in power and the activities of Im Tirtzu."

"Israeli Petition on EU Labeling of Settlement Products by "Indication of Origin" Contributes Significantly to the Future of Israel and to Peace" (pdf): click here!

Signed by over 550 prominent Israelis that welcomed the union’s decision and called on other nations to follow suit. Among the signatories was Avishai Margalit, a former recipient of the Israel Prize in philosophy, and Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Israeli Knesset.

...In Israel proper, the government belongs to the extreme Right, with some elements that would be called "fascist" anywhere else. The Center and Left are impotent. The only real political fight is between the radical Right and the even more radical extreme Right.

There is a campaign being carried out against anyone actively opposing the occupation in Israel, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an activist in the field, a human rights attorney or a former soldier talking about what you were ordered to do.

Israeli authorities arrest prominent activists Ezra Nawi, Guy Butavia, and Nasser Nawajah. At least one of them was barred from meeting with his attorney for days. In court, one activist says his interrogators used materials taken directly from a right-wing organization.

Israel has arrested three human rights defenders amid what appears to be a concerted campaign, backed by authorities, to sabotage domestic organizations documenting Israeli abuses of Palestinians. Last week, Israeli forces arrested Ezra Nawi, a member of Taayush, a Palestinian and Jewish activist group that defends the rights of Palestinian farmers in the South Hebron Hills area of the occupied West Bank.

Orly NOY: "The Israeli Left must realize it is at war" (+972, Jan 20, 2016): click here!

It is unthinkable that we will play according to the “rules of democracy” as fascism becomes the new state religion. Our silence today will only serve as the basis upon which our friends will be arrested tomorrow. Now is the time to break that silence.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the massacre carried out by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces against the Arab Israeli village of Kafr Qasim, during which 49 residents died, including women and children, who were making their way home from their fields. In anticipation of the 1956 military campaign over the Sinai Peninsula, Israel had declared a curfew for Arab villages on that day. The villagers were returning from the fields half an hour after the declaration, unaware of the curfew.

Even veteran members of the Israeli left-wing camp cannot remember when they were last subject to such a concerted, prolonged and vicious assault as the one they have faced in the last few weeks. There were times in which Israel's radical left was smaller, but rarely was it put to such an institutionalised and almost official campaign of delegitimisation.

The Israeli Left with which most Palestinians are familiar speaks the same language as the Right — of segregation and safeguarding a racist regime. The ‘other Left’ needs to develop a new discourse, and we should all hope it succeeds.

Why do these shootings keep happening in your communities, I'm asked sometimes. That's what happens, I respond, when the state ignores your existence, and violence mediated by criminals is used to resolve disputes.

An Israeli political leadership deeply committed to the expansion of West Bank settlements, including outposts and isolated colonies, combined with the growing influence of national-religious Jews within the military, makes the prospect of any large-scale removal of settlers a fantasy. When will global decision-makers wake up?

Citizenship here is reminiscent of South Africa's in the past: Jews are 'white' citizens, Arabs in Israel have 'colored' (in other words, partial) citizenship; and Palestinians in the territories have 'black' citizenship, without political rights.

Carolina LANDSMANN: "Israel's Ethical Terrorism and Special Brand of Morality". "It’s terrorism, Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledges, but not exactly. It’s evil, but not entirely. And Jewish evil is always the exception that proves the rule" (Haaretz, Dec 31, 2015): click here!

Just as the Israeli army is the most moral army in the world, Israel’s terrorism is the most moral terrorism in the world. Its political persecution, torture, racism and censorship are the most moral in the world. Its apartheid is the most moral.

Alon IDAN: "By Banning Book, Israel Maintains Purity of Blood". "Jews and Arabs are forbidden to have sex, love, marry, have families or live with one another, according to the Education Ministry" (Haaretz, Dec 31, 2015): click here!

We’ll have to do some decoding to properly understand what Dalia Fenig, the acting chair of the Education Ministry’s pedagogic secretariat, was saying when she disqualified the novel “Borderlife,” the story of an Israeli and Palestinian who fall in love in New York, for use in advanced high school literature classes.

The army is everything in Israel: its foundation, its heart, its history, its future and its compass — both moral and directional. For anyone to question the army’s actions and motives is the most wounding criticism anyone can direct at Israel, because it strikes at the country’s soul. The IDF is the most revered of Israel’s many sacred cows.

First they established the foundation of their existence, the settlement enterprise. After they achieved their goal – the killing off of any diplomatic agreement and destruction of the two-state solution – they were free to turn to their next target: taking control of the public debate in Israel on the road to changing its power structure, character and substance.

With another New Year approaching and no positive movement on the ground, the word from the Israeli left, at least what remains of it, is foreboding. The indefatigable reporter, Amira Hass, is on her own non-violent warpath. Avraham Burg, a former architect of the apartheid he now sees as the end of Israel as a Jewish state, isn’t mincing words either.

Organization, which exposes army misconduct in the territories, spreads 'lies and incitement' against the IDF, Bennett says; Breaking the Silence: Bennett's message is that veterans are only good for cannon fodder.

Gideon LEVY: "Israel Is Already a Binational State, and Has Been for a Long Time" (Haaretz, Dec 13, 2015): click here!

The debate must begin to shift now. No more proclaiming 'two states' and 'Jewish state.' The task now is to make it just.

"“Academia is keeping mum, a shocking silence. Where are the humanities? Social sciences? Judaic studies? Law? There is an ongoing neglect of the world of concepts. The intellectual arena is suffering from a conceptual bankruptcy that facilitates the growth of competing visions in the public space."

"The most dangerous threat Palestinians face in their struggle for freedom and human rights, besides the Israeli war machine, is the absence of historical context, or any context for that matter, in political discussions and media coverage of the conflict. This deliberate omission is demeaning, demonizing and dehumanizing".

Ilana HAMMERMAN: "Germany and the Jews, Israel and the Palestinians. One Must Compare". We live in a society that cultivates the feeling, from kindergarten to old age, that every stranger is an enemy (Haaretz, Nov 20, 2015): click here!

"...This control, which was a covert ideology for many years, is now the product of an overt, official, nationalist and racist ideology. Yes, there is a basis of comparison between a society that allows all these things to happen, by deed or indifference, and a society that could allow the pogrom 77 years ago to happen. Though we may hope that no concentration camps await in the end.".

"This is not a one-off act of racism by an lone-wolf Israeli police bully. This is official racism and brutality. This is official sanctioned violence by the state against its own citizens. Though they happen to be citizens who are not White and therefore not worthy of the full rights of every other Israeli citizen. Israel is a state seeped in racism and violence: not just against Palestinians (which is half to be expected) but against its own Palestinian and Black citizens".

Gideon LEVY: "This Is What the Moral Decline of Society Looks Like". "A sane society wound not incarcerate children as young as 12, but would instead try to treat the roots of their motivation" (Haaretz, Nov 8, 2015): click here!

We’ve lost. On the day a 13 year-old is questioned as if he were the head of a crime organization; on the day when Israeli thugs surrounded him, screaming “die, you son of a bitch”, as he lay bleeding; on the day young parents and newscasters on television call an 11-year-old boy a “terrorist” without even thinking of their own children.

Amjad IRAQI: "Can we call it one state and be done with it?" (+972, Nov 8, 2015): click here!

The debate over whether we are living in a single state is irrelevant – the answer is a resounding yes. The real problem is that freedom and equality are only extended to some of its subjects.

We often hear that that Israeli democracy is being ‘hijacked’ by a group of right-wing extremists. Too bad the alternatives aren’t any more appealing.

Haggai MATAR: "No Netanyahu, we refuse to keep living by the sword" (+972, October 26, 2015): click here!

The Israeli prime minister says Israelis are doomed to a permanent state of war. It’s time to show him that we aren’t willing to come along for the ride — that we believe in a future for us and our children.

Netanyahu’s attempt to place the mufti at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows just how bankrupt the extremists in Israel have become. It’s a declaration of all-out war on the Palestinian people. It’s ‘us or them.’

For those who are still under the illusion that Israel is a democracy, or “the only democracy” in the region, here’s another example of how far this “democracy” is becoming a dictatorship under the present government.

Now, of all times, out of the fire and despair, we must start talking about the last way out: one Israeli state with equal rights for both Jews and Arabs.

Eric DRAITSER: "Israel, the Media and the Anatomy of a Sick Society" (CounterPunch, 15 October 2015): click here!

"...The video of 13 year old Palestinian Ahmed Manasrah bleeding to death on the pavement of an East Jerusalem neighborhood has been described as “shocking,” “disturbing,” and “painful to watch.” The callous verbal abuse and insults from Israelis watching the child writhe in agony are variously characterized as “heartless” and “cruel”; and indeed they are. “Die you son of a whore. Die! Die!” the Israeli onlookers can be heard shouting in the video which has since gone viral on social media...".

In haze of current security situation, Ministerial Committee for Legislation is slated to consider a bill that would inject elements of Jewish law into Israeli law.

Gideon LEVY: "Israel's Lawless Death Penalty Without Trial Buoyed by Cheers of the Masses" (Haaretz, 11 October 2015): click here!

"The people of Israel see these pictures and most of them are filled with delight and pleasure, as the media inflames their animal urges. That’s the real incitement. Adults and children see how Arabs are shot like stray dogs at the roadside and learn the lesson. In this way, one of the main reasons for this uprising’s eruption is demonstrated - the dehumanization of the Palestinians, whose life and death are worthless to the Israelis."

Close ties means Israeli pupils are being raised to be "good soldiers" rather than good citizens. [...] All the teachers noted that schools have come under mounting pressure to actively participate in the army programme. Each school is now graded annually by the education ministry not only on its academic excellence but also on the draft rate among pupils and the percentages qualifying for elite units, especially in combat or intelligence roles.

Ofri ILANY: "Justifying War Crimes in the Name of Judaism" (Haaretz, Sept 25, 2015): click here!

In contemporary Israel, the idea of the universal mission of the Jewish people has morphed into something else – and all in the name of the Jews’ supposed moral supremacy.

His cousins lead calm, secure lives as he turns all Israel into the former Gaza settlements — fenced in on all sides, an army battalion for every family. [...] Young Israelis are being drafted into the army to serve as jailers and policemen over a conquered people. They’re trained to be ignorant, xenophobic and arrogant about the whole world, these members of the chosen people. The democracy they live in is also foundering. No hope peers over the horizon, mainly because of Netanyahu.

"It's all based on an obsession: Israel must be a Jewish state at any cost. Just or unjust, good or not good, flourishing or not flourishing — the main thing is that it be Jewish. And as with any obsession, few can explain why and no one is allowed to doubt it.

"When Israel completes the construction of its eastern fence, it could finally declare itself a well-fortified stronghold in the heart of the Middle Eastern jungle".

Dan COHEN & David SHEEN: "Haaretz’s Or Kashti on the rightwing religious takeover of the Ministry of Education" (Mondoweiss, September 8, 2015): click here!

"(Kashti) painted a grim outlook for Israeli society in which the education system is anti-intellectual, Jewish identity is exploited to serve political Zionism, and non-Zionist perspectives are eliminated. Perhaps most frightening is Kashti’s warning that within twenty years, first graders will be ill-equipped to simply understand the world around them.

Avi ISSACHAROFF: "The end of the two-state solution" (The Times of Israel, August 6, 2015): click here!

It’s time to say it out loud: The Israeli right has won — a temporary, pyrrhic victory that has set Israel on the path to becoming a Muslim-majority state.

Prominent author says Miri Regev does not understand her job, favors Jewishness and Israeliness over freedom of expression."Controversy surrounding Israel's new culture and sport minister, Miri Regev – among other things, because she has threatened to cut funding for a Jaffa children’s theater – has spawned sharp protest among the country's arts community [...] Also on Sunday, more than 3,000 artists signed a petition, entitled “the blacklist,” rejecting the authorities’ recent decisions targeting cultural institutions. “We protest against the anti-democratic measures taken by government ministries toward creators whose art or views aren’t in line with the views of these ministries,” said the petition, which was signed by actors Gila Almagor and Itay Tiran, architect Amnon Rechter, and writers Tsruya Lahav and Shoham Smith, among others."

"The bottom line is very simple: Israel — its government, economy and citizens — regularly exploits everything it can from the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians the bare minimum for survival. There is no such thing as “democratic Israel” to the west of the Green Line and “occupying Israel” to its east. Occupying Israel exists in Tel Aviv as well."

Salman MASALHA: "If Sephardic Jews Want to End Their Discrimination, They Must Become Proud Arabs" (Haaretz, April 1, 2015): click here!

Ashkenazi Zionism, which established the country in an ongoing confrontation with the Arab world, created a serious emotional crisis for Jews from Arab countries.

One bill allows communities to screen potential new residents, and another bars public funding of entities that 'undermine foundations of the state and contradict its values.' Known as the "Nakba Law," its original intent was to sentence to prison anyone who marks Israeli Independence Day as a day of mourning or who holds memorial events for the Palestinian "Nakba" (destruction ).

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."